This is the International Development Committee’s session on the situation in Afghanistan. We have three panels today. We will start with our first witness. Over to Janet.

Good afternoon, Ms Akbar. Could you please describe the current situation for women and girls in Afghanistan?

Thank you, yes. The current situation for women and girls in Afghanistan is the worst women’s rights crisis in the world. Women are deprived of all their fundamental rights and liberties. Girls above age 11 cannot formally attend school; women cannot access healthcare and public services without a man accompanying them, an adult family member; women cannot participate in politics or hold positions in the Government, beyond a police search of other women; women are banned from all sectors of work except healthcare and education, and that is of course teaching girls until grade 6. Women are continually harassed on the streets by the Taliban’s moral police for their outfits, for not conforming to the Taliban’s restrictions, which includes covering the face, just being able to see with their eyes. The restrictions started when the Taliban took over, but they were gradual, they were stage by stage. They started implementing them first in Kandahar, which is where the Premier of the Taliban is, and then slowly expanded them. The restrictions are being implemented through decrees, formal laws and institutions. In particular, the Taliban’s Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and the Directorate of Intelligence are the ones that are most responsible for violations of women’s rights on a daily basis, with punishment and persecution of women and of course the Ministry of Education, other services and various institutions. Men are also forced to comply, because men will be punished. For instance, if you are a woman in Kabul and want to go and access healthcare, if you have an urgent health issue and you want to go the hospital and you do not have an adult male from your family to accompany you—and there are a lot of female-headed households in Afghanistan as well, because of four decades of conflict—if you try to get in a taxi, and a taxi driver has mercy on you or a bus driver has mercy on you and tries to carry you, the Taliban can stop the taxi driver or the bus driver, detain him and physically assault him for doing this. The woman will not be released unless she gets in touch with a mahram, with a male member of the family, to come and basically rescue her from the situation. The male member of the family will then be forced to give a written commitment to the Taliban police that this will not happen again. Shopkeepers, for instance, are not allowed to sell commodities to women who are not accompanied by men. This has meant that women are deprived, stripped of all dignity in public spaces. They cannot access places of recreation, playgrounds, parks, gyms, beauty salons or public baths. They can only leave the house for urgent needs, accompanied by and at the mercy of a male family member, otherwise they will be punished and prosecuted. For five years now, millions of young girls across Afghanistan have been deprived of the ability to go to school and pursue an education, so there is a vast mental health crisis among young women and girls, with suicidal thoughts, attempts at suicide and attempts at self-harm. Professional women worked in the Afghan Government. In all ministries, there were women working. I spoke to a woman recently, just last week. She used to teach in an institute; she used to teach banking and finance at master’s level. She was a very accomplished professional, a professor. She had contributed to the curriculum initially when the Taliban came back into power. They told her to report to work two days a week, all covered, to come with a male relative to study the basics of religion. She was not allowed to continue teaching because she is a woman. For the first two years, they were giving her a salary. Later they reduced her salary and that of all her colleagues, then they fired her and all her female colleagues, so a professional woman with professional standing and an income that her family relied is now dependent on humanitarian handouts to maintain her family and feed her children.

It is a horrific picture that you paint, and it has happened so fast. Were these changes incremental or did they basically all come in at once?

They were incremental. Another story that I wanted to share is from another young woman who was a midwife in Afghanistan. She is from north Afghanistan and she is a member of my extended family. Her siblings left Afghanistan, but she decided to stay because she really enjoyed being a midwife and was very respected in the community where she worked, which was in another province in south Afghanistan. This community had very few educated women, so they had a shortage of midwives. Initially she was like, “Okay, it is fine. I am going to wear the hijab that the Taliban want me to wear here and continue doing my work”, but as the restrictions increased, she left Afghanistan. She went to Pakistan in early 2025 and now she is stranded there without a visa and worried about police searches and forced deportation. The reason that she left was that the Taliban then required her to have a mahram living with her—her brother came to live with her—and accompany her to work every day at the clinic and to be there with her if she had any night shifts for deliveries. This was the situation. Her brother had his own ambitions in life and so he could not permanently do this. There were also religious police continuously visiting the clinic where she was working and policing how she was dressed and whether she was interacting with any male colleagues, so the situation became untenable. Initially women tried to find ways to work within the restrictions, but many had to give up.

Sticking with that particular example, what is the official justification for why she needs a man with her when she is working?

Because as a single woman in a workplace, you are a source of provocation for any man who might be around.

So it is that the women might be tempting the men, not that the woman might be vulnerable to sexual abuse from the men?

Both, but also that she might be tempting to men, so to protect both men’s faith—I don’t know what, really—and also the women, there has to be a man always accompanying the woman, even in her workplace. If she is staying for the night, then she has to have a mahram to be with her. Delivery, for instance, does not know day or night, so midwives work different shifts all the time. They made it increasingly more complicated.

Sticking with the medical, as a woman, if I needed sexual or reproductive health support, would I be able to have a woman physician?

You would be, but not for long, because in December 2024 the Taliban also banned medical education for women. This was one of the added reasons this young woman left, because she wanted to train and become a physician, but that is no longer possible. We are essentially looking at a gradual femicide, because in the context of Afghanistan, many families would not agree for female members of their family to be treated by a man, and also the Taliban do not allow that. If I am a woman and I have a very specialised medical need and there is no female doctor who is a specialist in my area, I go to the male doctor with my husband, all covered. I whisper in my husband’s ear and he explains my situation to the doctor. Imagine you are in an abusive relationship, you are struggling with mental health issues and you want access to mental healthcare and then you have to go with the man who is abusing you to speak with the therapist or to seek those services. You cannot keep it a secret; you cannot keep it to yourself. It is the same also with justice, of course. If you are being abused at home and you want to seek a legal remedy, there is very little. There is no legal remedy for emotional abuse or economic abuse, just for physical abuse. If you can show that you have broken bones or bruises, then your husband can be detained for 15 days and then returned back to the same home with you to live there. If you are brave enough to go to the Taliban court and you can convince your father or your brother to go with you, and you manage to imprison your husband for physical abuse that might lead to your death, again he is released and he comes back to you and he can continue. Of course we know what happens when he comes back.

It is an absolutely extraordinary hell that you are describing. I will go to Tracy and then back to Janet.

A quick question specifically on midwifery. If women are stopping practising midwifery, are men filling these posts or are these posts just disappearing and there will be no midwives at all?

Women can practise midwifery. Women cannot train as midwives anymore, so that is the challenge, because there is already a shortage of female midwives. Afghanistan, even before the Taliban came into power, had a shortage of female healthcare providers. Now we will have an increased shortage, so that means there are fewer clinics operating that can serve female patients.

Are any men taking those jobs or looking to take on midwifery?

I am not aware that men would be delivering services related to midwifery, no.

Ms Akbar, it is a lot to take in and it all sounds quite unbearable. We can feel the sense of oppression. Are the Taliban concerned about the mental health of women and girls at all? Do they recognise the crisis here?

Their actions would say no, because we have seen increasing laws and restrictions and policies. There may be members of the Taliban who share some of the concerns, because we also hear that some senior members of the Taliban have their own daughters studying in countries in the region, for instance, so obviously they are aware of women getting a modern education and that it is important, at least some of them. Everything that we have seen on the policy front is further oppression. They know that the Afghan public are not happy with this. Afghanistan is a conservative society, it is a country with a patriarchal society, but there is wide support for girls’ education. People understand the value of girls’ education. There is also enough religious justification for women to go to school and university, which happens in all other Muslim countries. The Taliban know that this is a pressure point, so what they started doing—we have documented cases—is imprisoning people who had written on Facebook something like, “Girls need to go to school. I hope the Government changes this policy”. For something as mild as this, they face severe consequences. A journalist asked the Taliban’s Minister of Higher Education, “You said that schools and universities will reopen. When will that be?” and he essentially said, “You can’t ask questions about this topic either”. Just as there is a ban on education, there is a ban on asking questions.

Let me pause you there. You have done a fantastic job in giving us an introduction to the situation in Afghanistan. Now would be an appropriate time to ask both of you to introduce yourselves. Ms Joya, could you introduce yourself and the work that you do that brings us to the Committee today?

First of all, sincere apologies for being late.

Don’t worry.

It is a hot day today in the UK. Thank you very much for having us. My name is Zahra Joya. I am a journalist and editor in chief of Rukhshana Media, which is a platform for women to amplify their voices. I am based in London.

I am Shaharzad Akbar. I lead Rawadari, which is an Afghan human rights organisation based in exile, registered here in the UK. My colleagues are refugees in different parts of the world, as well as a network inside Afghanistan of data providers who do the actual documentation under very difficult circumstances. We have published 13 public human rights reports. We usually do an annual report on violations of civil and political rights, as well as a six-month report, and then we do thematic reports on issues. Our latest reports, for instance, were on torture, the rights of children, education for women, the Taliban’s justice system, as well as the rights of Ismailis, a religious minority.

Thank you. You have outlined what has been going on and the changes that have happened. Many describe what is happening in Afghanistan as a gender apartheid; from what you have said, I think they are absolutely right to do so. Could both of you reflect on this: have you seen the UK Government funding any projects to help or to challenge that, to support civil society to support women and girls? Ms Joya, do you have any thoughts on what you have seen or experienced?

I am a journalist and I am not inside the country but, based on the information that I am receiving from my colleagues on the ground—they are working underground, basically in secret—most women and vulnerable groups, most of the time, are deprived of receiving international aid. I don’t know how much the UK Government are involved in this section, but so far we are receiving information that people in rural areas—particularly widowed women and those who do not have a male member in their family—are desperately looking for international aid, for humanitarian aid. Poverty is increasing day by day. Imagine half of the population denied the right to go to work or education. Of course, if these people are not allowed to work, obviously no amount of humanitarian aid can solve the problem.

Exactly, thank you. Ms Akbar, do you have any experience or understanding of UK aid getting through?

The UK provides mostly humanitarian aid through big international organisations inside Afghanistan in the UN, so that is my understanding of how the humanitarian aid operates. I do not have a very clear picture of what support, if any, the UK Government provide to Afghan civil society, which does vital work inside in Afghanistan, but of course mostly underground and outside. I know sometimes Governments struggle with supporting civic work inside Afghanistan because these groups are in no position to register themselves with the Taliban. Women-led NGOs cannot register, for instance, under the Taliban or provide the sort of reporting that donors usually need, but it is essential that civic space inside Afghanistan is protected. It is essential that organisations that are providing education to girls online or in other ways continue to receive funding. It is essential that human rights organisations inside and outside Afghanistan are supported to continue to provide very important documentation. Another area where I would like to see the UK Government take a more active role is on international accountability, in holding the Taliban accountable. I described to you—and Ms Joya did as well—the worsening situation on the ground for women and girls and for media. We see globally and regionally this increasing normalisation of the Taliban. The Taliban were in Brussels a few weeks ago to discuss deportations. As Governments come under pressure from their own constituencies and from right-wing movements, they try to normalise interactions with the Taliban in the interests of their very short-term national interests. I worry about the UK Government taking the same direction as well. I think it is important that the UK defends its—

Are you seeing any evidence of that?

The UK sends an envoy to Afghanistan. I have spoken to Mr Richard Lindsay and I know he speaks with the Afghanistan human rights community as well. It is a good thing that he engages with the Afghan human rights community, but I was very disturbed to see him in his trip, in his engagements with the Taliban, refer to them as Ministers. The Taliban is not a recognised Government; they are de facto authorities. It is very important in terms of messaging from the UK Government that the Taliban is in no way recognised. It is also very disturbing to me that the Home Secretary did not rule out deportation talks with the Taliban and that the UK has a visa ban on four countries, including Afghanistan. I think all these steps contradict the UK’s position on women’s rights and its position on international law.

To follow up on that, do you have any understanding of the impact of the UK student visa break on the prospects for women and girls in Afghanistan?

Afghan women do not have any opportunities to study inside Afghanistan, so they look everywhere, including the UK, and they apply. There are some scholarships in the UK. Afghans were also covered by Chevening, so Afghan students would come through that, but not large numbers. I looked at the numbers in 2025 and I think in total there were 335 Afghan students. Not huge numbers, but despite this, there is the visa ban. Every little window—we need everything we can get in terms of opportunities because women are living under a gender apartheid. We need more opportunities and more pathways for Afghan women to safety, education and employment. Their talents and potential are being wasted. The UK could benefit from that talent and potential. When the visa break came into place, there were young women who reached out to me saying, “We have acceptance from UK universities and we jumped through so many hoops to get there”, convincing their families, learning English, taking their tests, borrowing money and taking loans et cetera, “Now we have to go to Pakistan to get a visa. All of this we did and now the door is shut in our face. This is a slap; this is a betrayal.”

I want to push you a little bit further on the engagement with the UK Government. Their policy is of “limited and pragmatic” engagement. Can you just spell out what you think that should mean?

Yes, absolutely. I am not against engagement with the de facto authorities. I realise that Governments have to engage with the de facto authorities to deliver humanitarian aid. It is essential, and Afghans need humanitarian aid. In fact, the UK does make a significant contribution to humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. It needs to increase. However, humanitarian aid is not sustainable and the current situation is not sustainable. The de facto authorities, the Taliban, need to get a united and firm message from all countries that they will not be treated as normal authorities, as a normal Government. There is a sort of de facto recognition when these visits are made and these discussions are held about deportation that this is off the table, as long as they reverse their policies of gender apartheid, reverse their policies on women’s rights and restrictions on education and employment, and so on. I do feel that the messaging from the UK here is a little bit all over the place. Sometimes it is very firm and sometimes it is very mild. It is very unclear. These decisions on, for instance, the study break and, “Oh, we might discuss deportation with the Taliban”, this sends very confusing messages to Afghan women, because it is not just the Taliban you are talking to. Afghans are closely following how the Taliban are being received by world leaders, by different Governments. The meeting in Brussels was extremely discouraging to many women and girls who reached out to us and said, “We have failed. This is the end of our journey. What is the point of our struggle or sacrifice if these people are being treated like a normal Government? What is normal about what we are experiencing? We are alive, we are breathing, but we are not living and the world is normalising this”.

Let me pause you there. Brian.

Thank you. Ms Joya, looking at civil society more broadly, what opportunities are there for the UK to support groups working in Afghanistan, be they on human rights, humanitarian relief or development issues?

Thank you so much. This is a very good question. First, allow me to give a bigger picture about the situation and reality in Afghanistan. To be honest, while it seems like a country in the 21st century, in reality it has become like a black hole, where almost none of the basic standards of modern governance and human rights can be found in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. That is why it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to fully describe what is going on. For example, during the five years from August 2021 to March 2026, the Taliban publicly flogged at least 2,700 men and woman from different ethnic groups. These figures come from the Taliban Supreme Court’s official statements. However, Afghan media in exile have documented more than 100,000 cases of flogging since the Taliban returned to power. Imagine that landscape. I really do not understand how this civil society can do their job when they are not allowed to speak about human rights, when they are not allowed to speak about the freedom of speech. Also the Taliban has clear red lines that nobody can cross, otherwise there is a lot of punishment waiting for them. For civil society, it would be meaningful if they are allowed to work, to raise awareness and to do advocacy, but unfortunately under the Taliban regime that possibility has lost its meaning, and I think it is not possible for them to do more active advocacy inside the country.

If we could break it down, on human rights it is very difficult to do anything. What about humanitarian relief?

Absolutely. On humanitarian relief, for example, there are some red lines from the Taliban on the people. For example, if you are an NGO, you have to have a Taliban representative inside your office. When you distribute this aid, you have to confirm with the Taliban first. Also in civil society, most of them are tied to the Taliban, otherwise they don’t have choice. If they are not tied to the Taliban, they are not allowed to work inside the country. I can overall say that it is a very punishing environment for people in separation from the Taliban that people are facing inside the country.

I want to return to country relationships. What is your assessment of the US Administration’s approach towards Afghanistan? A question to both of you, briefly.

I think the US Administration’s approach to Afghanistan is similar to its approach to many countries that it no longer cares for, right? It is not on the map for the USA. We are not on the map. Afghanistan is not on the map in the sense that the only interactions will be transactions and those transactions are around hostage exchange, for instance, which has happened a couple of times. The US President has repeatedly commented on the ammunition and military equipment, and so on, that was left behind in Afghanistan and sometimes refers to Bagram Air Base, but from what I understand, there is no active assistance going on beyond humanitarian assistance to civil society work, to human rights work, to media. There is no ongoing consultation or engagement by the US Government with Afghanistan civil society and human rights movements. That happened previously, under President Biden, but it is no longer happening. Of course there is also, from the Afghan community’s side, this deep sense of betrayal and anger, which also does not assist with trying to engage with the US Government.

I could not agree more with Ms Akbar, because Afghans, particularly women, feel betrayal from the US after they signed this agreement in Doha without the representation of civil society or women’s involvement. At the moment I think the people of Afghanistan, particularly women, are not looking that much at support from the US. It is a bit obvious, because we really do not understand the Trump policies towards human rights, freedom and democratic values. I still think the US has its own mission in Afghanistan through Doha and it is active. I have met a few diplomats, but it is not that clear to us what they are doing.

My understanding is that there was some tolerance of female micro-businesses in some areas in Afghanistan, but it very much depended on who the civic leader in the area was and whether they would turn a blind eye to it. Is that also your assessment?

Yes. The private sector is one area where women are given some allowance to be active and to work, but if you speak to those businesswomen—we had an engagement around international accountability; we just wanted their views—they say, “Many of us were trained as engineers or in different sectors, in politics or journalism, and because we can’t practice any more what we could, we can’t be active in our fields, this is the only space that is left for us. That is why we have started doing this work, because this is the way we feed our families”. However, they face immense obstacles, because there are obstacles on movement and the obstacles on owning a business as a woman, all the restrictions, the obstacles on outfit and travel and so on. All of this also of course impacts the businesswomen’s ability to transfer their products, to exhibit their products, to show their products and to build relationships with business communities outside Afghanistan. It is like just breadcrumbs are being given to them. There is constant negotiation in that field as well because it is something that they very much fear could be taken away at any moment.

So far the Taliban leader has issued more than 400 decrees, laws and orders, more than 80 of which target women directly. All of these decrees and laws and rules are rooted in misogyny. Of course that is why so many Afghan women’s rights activists describe it as a gender apartheid system. During these five years that my colleagues and I at Rukhshana Media have reported on women’s issues, dozens of women have told us about torture and gang rape in the Taliban prisons. Our findings are supported by the United Nations. For example, the UN Secretary General’s annual report on conflict-related sexual violence, published this year, documented at least 21 cases of sexual violence committed by the Taliban forces and in the Taliban prisons and detention. From what I understand, there is a general law, which is to ban women from movements, from work, from education, so basically the Taliban legalise every aspect of the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan. There is some local resilience, which gives us hope. That is why we are fighting. We are seeing that women are fighting, despite the many challenges and restrictions they are facing inside the country. We believe that of course freedom comes with a cost, but women inside and outside are very active to reclaim their rights.

I think yes. For example, last month in Herat, in the Jebrail district, after the mass detention of women on the street, a group of at least 70 or 80 men and women came together on the street to protest against the Taliban and said no to these misogyny rules. Unfortunately the Taliban fired shots and at least three people were killed at this protest. Some families’ male members are supporting their daughters in pursuing education, they are supporting their girls to go to underground schools and supporting them mentally. Many families, to be honest, when I am talking with these people, are even selling their home stuff to send their daughters abroad to get an education.

Ladies, I am glad that we ended with a glimmer of hope. It never fails to disappoint me how rapidly women’s rights can be taken away by men. Aside from the human rights angle of it, for a low-income country not to utilise and empower 50% of its workforce and 50% of its future is a crazy position. I hope that this Government will continue urging common sense as well as reason. Thank you both very much. You are most welcome to stay for the rest of this session, but I will invite our next panellist to come up, please. Thank you. Examination of witness Witness: Fiona Crack.

Our next panellist is Fiona Crack, who is the Interim Global Director of BBC News and Director of the World Service. This Committee has always been incredibly proud of our World Service, because we hear at almost every one of our sessions how you are the one reliable source getting to some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. You have been particularly good—and I say this as a sister—in your crusade to get women’s voices out there internationally. Could you tell us a little bit about the work that you have done in Afghanistan, particularly since the fall of Kabul?

Absolutely. Thank you very much. It is a real privilege to run the World Service at the moment. The work that it does is unique and I hope a source of pride to everyone here. Our services in Afghanistan are already a strong source of trusted news and information. We broadcast on television and on radio; we have a strong digital service in both Dari and Pashto as well as Uzbek and Persian. It is a country that has been very well served by the BBC for many decades. When the Taliban took control of the country again and girls were excluded from school, we wanted to think differently about what we call an emergency lifeline. The World Service is quite used to dialling up our offer to audiences who need it most—for example, we put an emergency radio programme into Sudan, Gaza and Myanmar. When there are significant things happening in that country, we can dial up and we can offer a news and information service. Afghanistan was different because there was a demographic, a part of the audience that was suddenly most in need: the children of Afghanistan, particularly the girls, who were unable to go to school. We thought very quickly about what we could do. Here in the UK we have brilliant children’s programmes and learning programmes, “Bitesize”. I have young children of my own and they have already started using that. It is just great provision. We thought, “What if we can take some of this great content and adapt it into Dari and Pashto and get it to Afghanistan?” Because of that mass media that we had already had through television and radio and digital, we already had those adult audiences. Why not change our offer and complement it with education programmes? That is what we did. We started “Dars” at the beginning of 2023.

It is absolute genius, but also an absolute no-brainer. Was that initiated by the World Service? Was it the Government that encouraged you to do it? Was it difficult to get the support you needed internally to make it happen?

I woke up in the middle of the night, deciding that we had to do it.

Good for you.

It is outrageous that Afghanistan stops girls getting their rights to education.

It is ridiculous.

Outrageous. It felt like a natural opportunity for us to do it. There was no resistance in the BBC. There was an enormous amount of support from children’s and learning, from our Director of the World Service at the time, from the head of news. Anyone who I talked about it went, “Yes. What do we need to do this?” There were never any objections. We did it in nine weeks, from the beginning of the thought to do it to getting it on air, which for television and radio never happens. That was because there was a huge surge of resources. There were two young women who we asked to do it. One of the great things that we had at our call was that the Afghan service was already there. We had had to evacuate a lot of journalists from Afghanistan at the time, and some of them were young women who had come on their own, without their families. It was they who presented the programme; it was they who could see the need for this programme, because some of their sisters and cousins were there in this demographic, the 11s to 18s. We split it in our lessons, but that is the demographic we are aiming for. They could see the need and knew that it was there and it was a huge effort across lots of places.

Can I bring Sam in to pick at some of the details, please?

Yes, I do; I have very clear metrics that help us. We are on series 6 at the moment, and series 6 is 12 episodes. I should just tell you it is maths, English and science, and then there are specialist subjects that I might be able to talk about a little bit later. In essence there are 12 episodes in any series. This latest series of “Dars” has had over 6 million views in Dari and Pashto on the social channels. People might be watching it more than once—in fact, we hope they are, they might be revising it, they are really using it—

Yes. With all our data, we can see where it is coming from. That is the social and digital, and that is views, but it is in addition to the 5.4 million Afghan population that we reach every week for the BBC for television and radio. It is not apples and apples there—you are conflating two things—but that shows how many people we are reaching with this. Metrics are not just about impact as well; it is much beyond that. We get lots of people in touch talking about the importance of “Dars”. If it is okay, Chair, I would like to share a couple of examples of these. This is from Nargas, who is 14 years old. She has not been allowed to go to school since sixth grade and it is this year that she was barred. Once they reach 11, that is when it starts. She says she faced her nightmare, “It felt as if my dreams and my future had been reduced to dust. I could no longer sit in class and study alongside my friends. It was as though the whole world had turned dark for me”. She says her older sister used to use “Dars” and so she started using it for the first time. She said, “Watching the BBC ‘Dars’ programme was like a ray of hope and light in the darkness for me”. She says, “I want to become a doctor to help the people of my country. I saw women’s stories in the ‘Dars’ programme who would not give up hope, despite the difficulties, and they achieved their dreams. I want to be strong and hopeful, like them”. Another quick one is from Abdullah, who is a father of two students in Zabul in the south. He says, “It is a great injustice to girls and women because education is a human and religious right”. His daughters studied until third grade in a school that was supported by UNICEF, but it was closed by the Taliban when they came, so they started following the “Dars” programme. He says it has also been very important for his wife, who lost her job in the changes. She now follows the programme and she has been able to help girls in surrounding houses to access “Dars” and to be part of this. He wrote to thank us, to say, “The BBC in their service to the Afghan women and girls is exceptional”. To me, it is so humbling, reading that and thinking of the team who produced this for our audience and the impact that it has.

Thank you. To your first question, I can give a couple of instances, one from when we started the programme. We operate in 60 countries around the world. We did contact the authorities to tell them we were doing this. We were going to do it anyway, whatever the reaction, but we did contact them. Some of what we heard about how the regime at the time was thinking about it was that they were not going to do anything to stop it, because education in the home seemed to be more palatable than the idea of girls going and congregating somewhere else. You are right that the panellists before me would probably have better information about that. I was also contacted about a year ago by a camera crew that worked for Channel 4, who had been over there doing a piece about the economy. They had gone to the north and into a rural environment. They went into an underground school, where they were teaching this. There is that kind of anecdotal evidence too in understanding that. In terms of the qualifications, when “Dars” started, I think there were very few learning opportunities. Now Tolo, the national broadcaster, has a science programme. There are many more now. It is a richer media environment for learning, which I think is a great thing. I think there are also remote courses where people can get qualifications. In the years that have come since, some things have opened up a bit and become a bit clearer.

Before I go into my questions, I am intrigued to know whether this is a shortwave-based system or—

No. We have an FM relay in Afghanistan. We used to have 34 FM frequencies—you often use them in a network—and that reduced to about 11 at the worst. It has gone back up again and now we have managed to get it. Radio is still a very important delivery mechanism for Afghanistan.

How much of the country are you able to reach?

Most now. Now we have them back up and running on the 20, so I don’t think there is an area that we do not reach on FM. We also have satellite TV, which is much more important in urban areas, and the digital reach is going up very fast. It has doubled in the last year. The internet is much more solid now for people to use.

This is tolerated by the Taliban?

The figures tell us that, but I don’t know what their policies are.

What is the vision for the “Dars” programme?

We started on very core subjects about learning, and very quickly, listening to the feedback, we thought about a wider need and we did programmes on critical thinking and media literacy. Those were things the girls, the children and their parents, asked for. We have now done something about mental health. We worked with War Child on a series of eight pieces that talked about displacement and bereavement. They were there to help people unpack and think about their feelings. That content has worked in many countries for the World Service.

The question I have here is, “What will be needed to see this become a reality?” but it is a reality—it is happening.

We are not stopping in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, all over the world there are children who are unable to go to school. Last year we launched “Dars” in Arabic and we now get to Sudan, Yemen and Gaza. UNICEF says that 31 million children are without an education in MENA. We have done that, and that is building audiences steadily. I would like to start in Hausa. We think there is a very particular need for children in northern Nigeria who are unable to go to school because of the kidnappings. I feel we could do more here and we will try to as part of our plans for the future.

The next question is a horror, but I think it is worth asking what would be lost if this were to finish?

You heard them talk about the hope and light in the darkness. It feels to me—and listening to the witnesses before—that this is something that the UK is so good at supporting. We are very grateful to the FCDO for the uplift for the World Service. We want to see sustained, solid funding for the World Service. This is something we can do, and now that we have started it, I am determined to continue it.

Do you know whether there are other channels doing similar work that is being transmitted in?

Yes. The national broadcasters, Tolo and several others, are doing specific programmes around science. There is more opportunity, but we see the need and the appetite for “Dars” increasing year on year in Afghanistan. I think the need is not fully being met elsewhere, which might make any other decision different, but this is needed at the moment.

Hearing about the scheme and having been to your studios and seen it in action, makes me incredibly proud to be British, and I think it is a very good investment of taxpayers’ and licence payers’ money. Thank you so much for what you and your team do. Thinking more broadly, will you be giving any recommendations in relation to education in Afghanistan to the UK Government that they could be taking forward?

For me, “Dars” remains an important pillar. While there are others in the market, obviously a media programme can never replace full learning. I think it is critical to continue. The World Service wants to continue this. Obviously you and other members have been involved I am sure in discussions around the future of the BBC and the funding that is needed as we come into charter. This is a very important time and process for us with our new DG coming in and the thinking behind that.

A quick question: is this whole “Dars” experience being written up academically? Is it being researched? It sounds incredible.

We are in contact with Cambridge University, which is looking at it and looking at Afghanistan specifically. There is also a documentary that we made about the plight of girls in Afghanistan, but focusing on a few families, and the story of “Dars” is woven into that. It is called “For the Sake of My Sisters”. You can find it on YouTube—I thought I would get that in there—and in essence it is a very moving and very powerful observational documentary.

I read something about the BBC World Service going further in Sudan at the moment, but using WhatsApp. I don’t know whether that is transferable to Afghanistan, but it seemed to me to be an innovative way of doing what you are doing. Are you doing that in Afghanistan as well?

We are looking at different markets for WhatsApp. WhatsApp is a particularly great delivery service for some markets. We are trying it in Sudan with a news and information service. We see the green shoots of that, but I think the World Service has always been very innovative. We have to be. There is more interference in our programming than ever before—more jamming, more blocking, more throttling. Media freedom is going down and down. The overall threat means that we have to be scrappy; we have to try different things like this. The WhatsApp trial in Sudan is part of that: can we get to audiences of need in a different way?

Fiona, please keep fighting. We have the greatest respect for you and your team. We know from testimony we receive how well your programming goes down and how vital it is for many around the world. Thank you very much for your evidence today.

Thank you for having me. Witnesses: Ms Mihyung (Miah) Park, Dr Tajudeen Oyewale and Ms Homa Nader.

I now ask for our final panel to come in, please. Our final panel is virtual. Thank you all very much for joining us. Could I ask you to introduce yourselves and the organisations that you are working for? Ms Park, could I start with you, please?

Hello, my name is Mihyung Park. You can just call me Miah. I am the Chief of Mission for IOM—International Organisation for Migration—in Afghanistan, based in Kabul. It is very nice to meet you all.

Thank you very much, Miah. It is a pleasure to meet you as well. Ms Nader. Homa Nader Yes, hello. Good afternoon. My name is Homa Nader. I work for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Afghanistan. I am the Manager of Humanitarian Diplomacy and Strategic Partnerships.

Homa, you are also wearing the best jacket of the session. I love the bubbles on you. Thank you very much for brightening up our session. Finally, Dr Oyewale, over to you.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Dr Tajudeen Oyewale. You can call me Taj. I am the UNICEF representative in Afghanistan. Thank you for the invite.

Thank you, Dr Oyewale. David Mundell, the first question is for you.

Taj, can I start with you and ask you to describe the food security situation in Afghanistan?

Thank you so much, and thanks for your interest in Afghanistan and the children of Afghanistan. As UNICEF, we work with our partners, WFP and FAO, to address food insecurity and malnutrition in Afghanistan. For 2026, we project that around 3.7 million children will have malnutrition in Afghanistan. Among them, around 900,000 will have severe, acute malnutrition and this will have major implications for their health and long-term development. As I speak, what is frightening for us, as I speak, is that we are looking at the current season, which is before the link season that starts in September and we are already seeing very high rates of wasting in children. Around 26 of the 34 provinces in the country are already showing signs of deterioration in wasting for children. Many of the children that we admit to the treatment centre for malnutrition are coming with complications. That shows clearly an interplay of five key difficult issues. For the very young ones, we are talking about poor breastfeeding practices. For the slightly older ones, over six months old, we are talking about poor feeding practices and limited access to food. UNICEF has already documented that around 50% of children in Afghanistan are suffering from what you call food poverty. The other two issues are infections and poor access to safe drinking water. Those are the sequelae through which food insecurity and malnutrition are playing out for the children of Afghanistan.

You have set out five reasons for why these circumstances are prevailing, but are there any other circumstances apart from the underlying approach of the Taliban Government more generally that exacerbate this situation or that otherwise would have been preventable?

Broadly, one dimension is the fact that there are limitations for women to have access to the productive workforce. As UNICEF, we did an estimate earlier this year on the cost of limited female participation in the labour workforce and access for girls to education. We are estimating that that is costing the country around $84 million annually. The financial capital of the household, which is often driven by mothers and women, is impacted because of those restrictions. All of that coming together also decreases the purchasing power of households, in addition to access to food, practices, like I said, but we should also keep in mind the impact of climate change. That is also impacting on the agri season. You might know that Afghanistan depends a lot on rain-fed agriculture. With climate change, the amount of rain that came last year is also impacting crop production.

Ms Nader, can you describe what challenges and opportunities the Afghan Red Crescent Society and other local organisations face in responding to the situation that Taj has described? Homa Nader Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. Food insecurity is a situation that cannot be addressed through international pipelines alone. Obviously severe funding cuts have destroyed international pipelines. It remains essential that international food pipelines are supported, but response also needs strong local delivery mechanisms and systems in place. It needs strong community-based targeting and nutrition screenings. It requires cash assistance in a big way, where there are functioning marketplaces. That is where you see an opportunity for local actors and, for example, the Afghan Red Crescent Society to step up. They are usually the actors that can go into those communities at the village level. They can identify the households that are not coping, that are invisible and that are at most risk. It is very crucial that we protect local action and systems, and those who can identify those who are most at risk, reach them and of course prevent hunger.

Is there no local Taliban resistance to that in terms of support being given to people who are in that vulnerable situation? Homa Nader In Afghanistan, there has always been an issue of access. We have seen this with the Afghan Red Crescent Society, with this regime and previously in the last five decades, when there has been active warfare in Afghanistan: there has been constant negotiation on humanitarian access when it gets blocked—negotiating with the local authorities on the ground, the key stakeholders that are at the most local level and having those negotiations to open up access. We have seen that a lot with the polio eradication work, community immunisation and health work. There is that constant keeping that engagement up and understanding who you are talking to. It changes from province to province. You need to understand the local authorities in a given province and who you need to speak to in order to keep that access going.

Taj, could you describe how changes in availability of funding have impacted the humanitarian community’s ability to respond to the crisis you described?

For us in Afghanistan, the immediate drop in funding in 2025, immediately around March last year, led to a 31% reduction in our humanitarian appeal, as a start to last year. It ended the year at a low level. In the nutrition sector, around 200-plus emergency nutrition sites were closed because of the funding shortfall. What we then had to do as a fallback position was to enable nutrition services to be delivered within the 2,400 static primary healthcare centres that UNICEF supports within the country, and we do that co-ordination at community levels and also with the de facto authority because of our expansive spread. The converse of that is that, because we are now loading more humanitarian cases to the 2,400 static facilities, there is more pressure on the social services, on supplies and on the health workers on the ground. This is how we are navigating the situation on the ground. Basically, many humanitarian outposts that would have been very close to where humanitarian assistance is required were closed because of the funding shortfall that we experienced last year. Those sites remain closed today. We had to use those fallback positions.

Could those sites be reopened if funding materialised from any of the donors?

Yes, they could be reopened if funding materialised. What you will have lost is that we will probably need to do a little more injection of resources to start them afresh. For example, last year—and maybe when you talk to me, I shall speak more to it—we had a variable post humanitarian operation for the returnee crisis that is also inclusive of health, immunisation and nutrition services. With the funding shortfall, we had to pull out and close those services. Then, when we had the earthquake response close to the same location, we had to start afresh to be able to deploy the human resource and manpower. This is the trade-off that we have but those services can be reopened. The skills and capacity are there. Our partners are on the ground, including the Afghan Red Cross and many civil society organisations that we work with. For UNICEF, our presence in the country is in 14 locations at sub-national level. We have community access and connections on the ground, with the community and our partners, to be able to rapidly deploy and mobilise action where needed.

Are you aware of any specific UK action or things that the UK Government might have done simply to counter the cut in funds? Are there other things they have sought to do to try to make the situation better?

I will make reference to three top lines of support from the UK last year, specifically for nutrition, since that is a topic on the ground. Together with UNICEF, the UK and UNICEF brought together a partnership that included UNICEF, FAO and WFP on what we call the First Foods Afghanistan initiative. The strategy behind this was to improve prevention of malnutrition, so that the caseload that we have for humanitarian need will decrease. That strategy is moving forward. The second action is that the whole of last year, the UK enabled a knowledge exchange programme on nutrition across many partners in Afghanistan. We were able to share notes, foster efficiency and assist one another when we had the major funding shortfall. That was how we were able to use the static facilities to offset the gap in the big humanitarian quarter. Lastly, the UK led what we call the food security and nutrition summit for Afghanistan last year in November, which resulted in the London Compact. The London Compact articulates clearly key actions in Afghanistan on prevention, treatment and management. For this year, a major input from the UK—I forgot to mention this, but you will recall that we do have some border closures with Pakistan which have prevented us from bringing in humanitarian supplies, including nutrition commodities from Pakistan. The UK provided additional funding to UNICEF to airlift nutritional supplements from Europe and Africa directly to Afghanistan to meet a critical gap that would have led to the deaths of so many children. We are very grateful for that support from FCDO.

Is that making a difference?

It is made a big difference and prevented a major stockout, because that gave us time to reorganise our supply chain to keep treatment on course.

Ms Nader, what do you think the outlook for food security might be in the coming months and years?

The support has to come in; that is what we are seeing. These funding reductions, for us, are not an abstract thing for the organisations that are on the ground. It means fewer meals, fewer mobile health teams there and reduced nutrition support. When we saw the drastic aid cuts in the first 11 months, that meant more than 2 million Afghans being without any primary healthcare support and nutrition clinics being closed down. It is going to require a few things. We are in the midst of fewer resources and looking at the humanitarian reset and better co-ordination modalities on how we can all play to our strengths together rather than working in parallel pipelines; being able to come together as a humanitarian community, understanding where we can all play to our strengths. This means the international organisations that are there and including the local actors where they can play to their strengths as well. If we get that right, then those are certain pathways that can be exercised where we could revert falling into a bigger famine-like crisis. It will require the resources. It would be amazing if the UK Government could sustain their funds to Afghanistan. It would also be amazing if we could ensure that local actors are being supported as strategic partners and not just partners where we are expecting them to do the last mile delivery and burn out. There are solutions around that. They are working more efficiently from where we sit and ensuring that we can find the resources in all of the international organisations coming together to co-ordinate and play at their strengths.

Miya, did you wish to say something? I thought maybe you did, or did I misinterpret?

No.

That’s fine.

Dr Oyewale, in your assessment, where is there scope for greater collaboration between humanitarian agencies or streamlining operations?

Can you repeat the question?

In your assessment, where is there scope for greater collaboration between humanitarian agencies or streamlining of operations?

Ms Nader mentioned it when she spoke about the humanitarian reset. One of the major things we had to do because of the funding shortfall was review the humanitarian co-ordination architecture. What we have done is make major savings in terms of the co-ordination architecture at sub-national level. In place of that, we have enabled more operational capacity at sub-national level. That way, we make some savings from co-ordination but get our funding to go into implementation. That was a critical input in there. The second one is on planning and co-ordination for joint strategy. As Ms Nader just said, as opposed to working at odds with one another, we are aligning strategy, looking into areas of complementarity. A good example is UNICEF, WFP and FAO working on one same stream of food security and nutrition as opposed to each of us doing things differently. Lastly, we are enabling our comparative advantage in our mandates, because each of us has different mandates, and we are bringing that together. I want to end on localisation because the local actors on the ground do a lot. What we are doing in Afghanistan on localisation is three things. First, we are enabling more voice for local NGOs and partners in discussions. Secondly, we are involving local actors in evidence generation so that their input informs the thinking. That way we can push for more localised solutions. Lastly, there is efficiency. When you work with local partners and they are still on the ground, the cost of assistance becomes cheaper because you already make some gains from their presence on the ground.

Ms Nader mentioned health earlier and I just want to come back to health for a minute. What impact has the reduction of ODA for health interventions had on progress towards tackling diseases—Ms Nader mentioned polio earlier, but in general as well? I will start with Taj.

I will be brief on this. The question is timely. The funding projection, and now this is for the funding into health sector for 2027 going forward, luckily for us, up to 2026, the health sector investment from donors had come mainly from bilaterals, but also from the World Bank and ADB. For the World Bank, there is the Afghanistan Resilience Trust Fund, which the UK is part of. That funding has already been allocated up to the end of 2026. When we go into 2027, we are facing close to a 60% decline in financing for the health sector. We are talking about a reduction from the primary healthcare system that will cost roughly to $270 million to a resource of around $100 million. If this were to materialise in January 2027, our estimate from the projection is saying that we are going to be exposed to an additional 9,000 preventable deaths, on top of the current status across Afghanistan at the primary care level. We are ramping up advocacy and then getting with donors to make sure that advocation in health can go higher. This is coming from the funding shortfall. At the same time, the donor partnership in Afghanistan is also engaging with the de facto authority for them to ramp up allocation into the health sector. Yes, there is a real impact of the funding shortfall on health in Afghanistan, and health is a good example of how a sudden reduction in aid has an impact on a system that needs time to build itself.

Thank you.

Building on the point that Tracy was examining and thinking specifically about polio vaccinations, what can be done to overcome some of the cultural, political, geographical and other challenges that you are facing in Afghanistan? Ms Nader, do you want to come in first on that?

Absolutely. Prior to 2021, the polio vaccination, or any kind of routine immunisation work, was completely prohibited in southern Afghanistan. Vaccinators were being killed then. Come 2022, it was actors such as the Afghan Red Crescent Society and my colleagues at UNICEF who did their best around advocacy with local authorities both at the national Kabul level and in southern Afghanistan, and through the ARCS, to advocate to ensure that routine immunisation and vaccines could be given to families in southern Afghanistan. There was a lot of work to enable vaccinations in southern Afghanistan. Taj knows this very well, because we have strong partnerships with the Gates Foundation—Christopher Elias was in Afghanistan two or three days ago—it is always a push-and-pull dynamic to keep that work going. It is important that Afghanistan remains one of the two countries, alongside Pakistan, that have polio, and it is important that we have seen from last year a reduction in cases and transmission has narrowed down, but we need to get to the point where we eradicate polio and ensure that we are not weakening the health infrastructure that is in place, and also that we are strongly advocating where we are trying to continue the good immunisation work in Afghanistan. It is important that the funding is still there and that we can one day push the bar and say that we have eradicated polio in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the short term, what specific challenges need to be overcome? You have described some cultural challenges; is that the biggest challenge from your perspective?

It is still very much the narrow cultural challenges—not being able to go house to house, for example. For sure, there are still the cultural challenges making it difficult to do some of the micro-planning in Kandahar and some of the provinces in the south. There is nothing in Afghanistan where dialogue cannot be crossed one day.

Do the other two on the call want to add anything to that?

I was part of the Polio Oversight Board mission that concluded yesterday, and I was in Kandahar with the Gates Foundation and others. I just want to add a few points. One is that access across Afghanistan has improved, so we can reach more children with polio vaccinations. However, as Ms Nader said, our inability for cultural reasons to have access to every household means that we are depending on mothers to bring their children out of the home for vaccination, because our vaccinators cannot go inside the houses to vaccinate children. Very young children and neonates whose mothers chose not to come out will never be reached. So we have a cohort of missed children and that is a risk for transmission. That is something that we discussed during the Polio Oversight Board, both in Kandahar and also in Kabul, to find a solution around. The second risk is that polio vaccination campaign benefits from the backbone of your primary healthcare system, and with a 60% funding shortfall that we envisage for next year, if the primary healthcare system is not strong and stable, polio vaccination will pay the price. That is also an implication for routine immunisation.

Do either of you think that there is any political appetite to remove some of these barriers, or will those barriers just have to be overcome day by day, month by month, year by year?

I will respond in two ways. There is a political commitment to end polio in Afghanistan. I can say that now with certainty. At every level, even in Kandahar, there is political commitment to end polio. That I can say, based on interaction. In terms of access to every household, that is a work in progress. We have moved away from mosque to mosque—where you can only stay in the mosque to vaccinate and you are really far from households—to site to site. So we are getting close, but we need time because there is a trust issue and there are behavioural and cultural issues. We are also working with religious leaders and community networks that are trusted to overcome this challenge, but it will take time.

If I can just add to that—and this is very short—Taj said it very well. Political and cultural community acceptance is done well by local actors. In 2022, we used the convening power of the Afghan Red Crescent Society and the fact that it sits as observers in the cabinet meetings to able to pass those messages. That is a continuous work that will take time and is best through local actors.

Ms Park, you indicated you wanted to come in.

Yes, I just wanted to add one aspect that makes it even more difficult for polio is the issue of huge number of returns. We see huge returns from Pakistan, and we know that many of them are coming from high-risk, low coverage areas in Pakistan. When they arrive in Afghanistan, there are multiple layers of movements within the country, and they often settle in weak service coverage areas. We know that among those returnees, at least half of them report a health service gap. It is very important that there needs to be a sustained investment not only in the broader health services, but in vaccinations, disease surveillance and community level service access.

What do you think the UK could be doing to help prevent some of the setbacks that you are describing?

Tajudeen and Homa both explained that general investment in the health service is the most essential. However, if we look specifically at polio and population mobility, the UK is already supporting us at the border, where the border health screening and management is important. In general, we need to make sure that the population mobility aspect is included in the polio vaccination and surveillance programme. The UK generally supporting the health services and the border health services has been essential and continues to be very important.

So you need continued commitment. Taj, is there anything you want to add about what practical steps the UK could be taking?

It is good to acknowledge that the UK made major investment in Gavi lately, because routine immunisation is also a backbone for addressing polio and strengthening the health system. That support needs to continue. Secondly, the UK currently co-chairs what we call the health and nutrition joint platform in Afghanistan. This is the highest-level donor, UN, NGO co-ordination on what we do in health, including polio. The role that the UK plays in trying to support a co-ordinated approach in the health sector in Afghanistan is critical, and I hope that the UK stays the course on this. Lastly, if it was possible for the UK to make some dedicated allocation to the primary healthcare system so that we can sustain the backbone, either through the ARTF or through bilateral investment at this point in time when we are faced with a cliff, it would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

Obviously the UK has withdrawn funding from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative; is that a major concern? You are shaking your head. It does not sound like that was in your top three things that you would like to see the UK doing.

The UK is doing that directly. I did not comment on that—sorry for taking it as a given that we already have that. The UK also supports us on education. This is critical for awareness reasons and orientation of communities to embrace health but also polio vaccination. That is also another area of critical work that the UK is doing with us, with other partners and we would like that to continue.

Any further comments about tackling polio?

It is important that the UK continues to support the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. I made the point earlier that it would be a bit of a travesty to weaken the infrastructure that is already in place. Again, with polio, it is one of those things that is a win for everyone if we can eradicate polio in both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I would really appreciate to see that the UK Government is still supporting it.

If I can just add a last point, that support is on the two sides, based on what Miah said. UK support on polio through the GPEI needs to continue for both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Eradication on one side does not solve the problem; it has to be done as a block. The UK’s commitment through the GPEI to that polio eradication initiative will be critical in that. The UK’s investment in Gavi to maintain a sustained routine at an immunisation level will prevent a resurgence. The two strategies together are important.

To be clear, if the UK did withdraw from that, what would the consequences be?

That would be a major global public health disaster because all the progress we have made in eradicating a world polio virus that is now limited to just two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it will spread because people are moving every day. For now, we have contained and we have reduced it. We are making progress. Yes, it is difficult. A withdrawal by any major donor from that partnership will weaken the whole system and it will lead to a global spread of world polio virus. Nobody wants that.

A major public health disaster?

Yes, I can use that word.

Homa, if I could come in and expand it a little bit, this Committee is about to do an inquiry on global health. Do you see, on the ground, that the international donor community understands the implications that you have all outlined—that if you are not supporting polio or another disease through the vaccine programmes that used to go on, that that is going to have a global impact, or are you seeing that their focus is very siloed on a specific country and the issues of that country?

I can start by—

It was to Homa.

I will go back to polio eradication. It is not only a vaccine supply issue; it is about trust, access, surveillance and local workforce issues that we have collectively worked on over the last three years. When we look at the final mile, what is the final mile of being able to eradicate polio in Afghanistan? It depends on those community volunteers and local health workers. We still have female vaccinators operating. It would be precisely the wrong moment to take investment—just to zoom in—out of polio work when we are so close to getting eradication and we are seeing the improvements of 2025 going into 2026. There are 17 million Afghans in need of some level of health support. The health infrastructure in Afghanistan has always been on the brink. It is surviving off international support in the country. It means a lot of things; it means a lot for women, women who are still operating as female midwives, female health workers who are still operating in the Afghan Red Crescent Society’s mobile health teams. That is one of the only areas that women are still able to deliver women to women services. Not investing would have severe consequences over time.

It absolutely is a deeply disturbing situation, but we are seeing pockets where that work continues with females. As I said, through the Afghan Red Crescent Society, any time there is an edict announced, the first thing that is done is this kind of closed door, back door diplomacy with the authorities to try to understand what this edict is, what it means, what it entails and how we continue allowing for the aid to reach women, so that women-to-women services can continue. There is this continuous work to try to make it work when there is an edict called and we think that things are going to change, and they do. It impacts organisations differently, but that is where we have the Afghan Red Crescent Society that, through that closed door dialogue, is able to continuously carve out that space. I am wondering, for more and more organisations, some of the international organisations that are having those issues, whether there would be a way to have more engagement with the Afghan Red Crescent Society on where we could push models and culturally acceptable ways that may work through them or do those negotiations where it feels comfortable for some of these authorities.

Yes, of course. The Afghan Red Crescent Society are auxiliary to any Government regime that comes into Afghanistan. It does not mean that the relationship is an absolute given. A lot of work that goes on in the back. The Afghan Red Crescent Society do not hold back. When they see issues, when they see women suffering and not being able to access the services, when they see that other sister international organisations are suffering to deliver services, they bring that up in cabinet meetings, whether organisations know it or not. They are constantly trying to keep that space moving along and ensuring that they are taking principled messages forward so that they continue delivering principal aid, and not just for the ARCS. Like I said, they bring in cases from all organisations.

Yes, absolutely. Again, if we go back to the polio eradication work in 2022, when it was not possible to support routine immunisation work in southern Afghanistan, at that time, it was the former vice president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society who was pushing negotiations in cabinet meetings to enable that space, to unblock it, to identify the key stakeholders in Kandahar that ARCS needs to push dialogue with. They take it case by case. I have to be honest here: I do think that ARCS is more or less exempt from various things. UK aid supports a very important programme for widowed women and at-risk women, shelters by the name of Marastoons. There are eight Marastoon safe shelters in all of Afghanistan, and the main contributor is the FCDO through the SHAPE programme, which enables girls of all ages to get some level of education. It shelters these women for three years. It supports them to be able to reintegrate after three years when they have graduated the programme, to reintegrate back into normal society. It gives them the shelter, healthcare, educational opportunities and these are some of the examples where the UK support has shown that it is a valuable support in Afghanistan. It is principled. Overall, the UK has shown that it preserves its humanitarian channels in Afghanistan, although it is an extremely hard operating space. It has made a difference.

Thank you very much; that is good to hear.

Shifting topics again towards the end of the session, Ms Park, could you please summarise the main trends and figures in terms of what we have seen of Afghans migrating or returning back to Afghanistan?

Afghanistan continues to face one of the largest return crises globally. Since September 2023, when Pakistan started its first IFRP, phase 1, more than 6 million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan. This represents about a 10% to 12% increase in population in less than three years. You can imagine that no country can absorb such a huge increase, especially a country that is already quite fragile and overstretched. We do return monitoring and, based on our data, it shows that there are huge reintegration challenges, and these challenges are all interconnected and mutually reinforce each other. There is economic insecurity, inadequate shelter, documentation issue for service access, which includes health as well as nutrition and food assistance, and also continued mobility within the country, and across the border as well. These factors working together make sustainable reintegration almost impossible in Afghanistan. We know that more than half, more than 50%, cannot cover basic needs among the returnees, and livelihood is the number one challenge that we face. These returnees, especially those returning from Iran, return with skills and some work experience from working abroad, but they struggle to find jobs and to be able to generate incomes in Afghanistan’s very constrained economy. Based on our last data, more than 70% said that they did not have a job, and almost all lacked productive assets that could create or generate income. The result is huge rates of unemployment, debt, inability to meet basic needs are widespread. Second is housing and shelter. It is a huge concern, especially in high-return provinces, and this large return is creating a lot of pressure on already very constrained housing markets. Only 50% say they have permanent housing, and almost 80% live in transitional living arrangements. They report overcrowding conditions and affordability is a big issue. Even if we provide support, especially for female-headed households, with rents for a number of months, over 50% face eviction. It is very difficult for people to have shelter. As you can imagine, shelter is a basic need and if they do not have housing, it is more likely that people will look for options and move forward. Another problem is documentation. A lot of these migrants, when they return, do not have documentation. About 75% say they either have no valid documentation or have incomplete documentation, and that affects their ability to access education, health services, employment opportunities, financial access, housing and all forms of assistance. It is a big issue. We have already touched on food security and health aspects, and these two are significantly affecting the returnee households. Many returnee households are resorting to negative coping mechanisms, including reducing food consumption, but a lot of times they borrow money, their debt goes up and they end up selling assets, selling children—labour exploitation for children—and early marriage. Early marriage is increasing. We also see people resorting to moving again. When people return, we ask what their intention is, whether they would like to stay or what is their intention to stay in Afghanistan. The majority, about 80%, say they want to stay and they want to try to reintegrate in the country. After a while, because they have no coping mechanism in the country, they look for outflow. When we look at both inflow and outflow, this is not person by person but number of movements. In Pakistan and Iran, the outflow has decreased since last year. Whereas before, inflow and outflow were quite similar, now the outflow is much smaller than the inflow, but people still see moving and taking chances to be able to find viable livelihood opportunities overseas as a viable option and we see people going to Iran, trying to make it from Iran to Turkey and onward.

Miah, if I could just come in, of the people returning to Afghanistan, you said about 12% have now returned. Are they forced returns or are they people choosing to return? Do you have a percentage?

We have what we call forced return, but we also have a category called spontaneous return. What we mean by spontaneous is that they were not deported; so it is not deportation, but they spontaneously return. We would not really say they are voluntary, because when we ask them why they have returned, No. 1 is fear of arrest and that either they are arrested or they have a fear of being arrested. We find Pakistan returns are all forced returns. What we increasingly see is happening in Iran this year, is that it is very difficult for them to find jobs in Iran. For them, because there are no longer viable livelihood opportunities in Iran, they decide to come back as well, but we would not call them voluntary returns.

A follow-up to the point that Miah just raised about the negative coping strategies, you mentioned about early marriage and selling children. Could you tell me what interventions and UK Government money are helping to prevent some of this from happening? Is there anything you can point at directly?

Yes. What is most important with the challenges is to be able to provide people with livelihood opportunities, because what they need is shelter and food, but for that, they need to be able to make money. UK has been one of the main partners that have been supporting many of us in the country, including IOM, in these integration supports. We support not only people, especially female heads of household, to access documentation, but also to give them employment opportunities, skills development, employment intention, so that they can find employment within the country to be able to afford and help rebuild their lives. I will give you one example. We had a widow who returned from Pakistan. She has been living there 25 years, and she came back with five children, widowed. When she returned, she had absolutely nothing. Her boys were out getting garbage to be able to sell. With the UK support, we got them documentation and we also put her in skills development for carpet weaving. Now she has a job, and she can start rebuilding her family’s life and be able to send her sons to school—not daughters, but sons. What counts is that there are a lot of people who really want to stay and who want to build a life, but because of lack of assistance that we can provide, they resort to negative coping mechanisms. When we can help, there is a hope and we need to simply expand that.

One quick follow-up, if I may: do we know what percentage of households are women-only?

It is a bit difficult to tell, but from at least our data, the majority who return, mostly from Iran, are single males. When we talk about returnees there are individual, single returnees and then there is the household family unit returnee. If we look at just the households, we see between about 15% and 30%, and it changes depending on the time and the country.

Dr Oyewale, Miah has outlined very well how we can prevent child labour and early marriage. I wonder if you could speak a little bit about the children who are not so lucky, who are married off young or forced into labour?

I was probably also harder on the dimension of the unaccompanied and separated children who are caught in the midst of the returnee crisis. First of all, on child labour, it is unfortunate that the child labour rate in Afghanistan is high. Together with ILO, we are mapping of the scale of that because it is a legendary thing over time. One, families are looking for income and, for me, children exposed to the worst form of exploitative child labour is a disaster, whether that is in agri or in the routine commercial sector of the country. That is predominantly on the ground then added to by the returning crisis. In the last year alone, among the returning population, when we have a family return, on average between 50% of family returns are children because families come with children. That is a huge number for us, and it is always heartbreaking when I meet very young girls at the border point coming from Iran or Pakistan who are going to school, because I know that once they cross the border, there is nothing that will happen to them. Beyond those children, we have identified around 9,000 unaccompanied and separated children last year in the midst of this whole returnee crisis. These are children who are brought into the reception centre without any family or caregiver. We have a network of social workers on the border and also in the communities that works on identifying them, and once they are identified we have a transit centre where they are kept safe, provided with psychosocial care, counselling, immediate healthcare support and then we do family tracing and unification. The UK Government are part of the funding that allows us to do that. We have been lucky in the sense that, if the children are from the region where they return to, so if they are coming from Iran, and their family is mostly from western Afghanistan, within 48 to 72 hours, we will be able to identify their families and get them returned. If they are from a further district, it takes a week, but we have also had incidents where it took us about two months to identify the families of these children. I also want to go back to the earlier question on female health workers, because in the primary healthcare system that we support, around 10,000 of the health workers are females. The health sector is still the sector where women health workers are allowed to work, but there are issues around it. The first is that we have to pay for the mahram cost. That means a male accompanying person who goes with them to work every day. That is an extra cost to the programme, but we are doing it because we want women to deliver for women. Beyond that, the pipeline of new female health workers is really fragile with the ban on secondary education.

A previous witness told us about that.

Exactly. Lastly, back to the returnee crisis, with the funding we get from the UK on education, we provide professional skills training for some of these young people who return, because we have kids of around 16, 17 or 18 who have been working across the border. When they come back, what is in their mind is to get some skills so that they can continue to earn some money. This is also additional support that we get from the UK Government, within our education programme but also linked to the returnee crisis.

Finally, coming back to Ms Park, what role can the UK play in encouraging a more pragmatic approach to working with the Taliban administration on these returns and migration matters?

Thank you for that question because engagement is very important in Afghanistan. We should not confuse engagement with endorsement. Just because we engage with the Taliban—we meet with them, with the de facto authority and we discuss everything—it does not mean that we endorse them. Another thing is that engagement is essential. It is not like there is another option, because for us to deliver, to be able to access the population to provide support, engagement is essential. I have to say that the UK, especially FCDO, has been really championing a principled engagement and supporting us on the ground to be able to do that principled engagement. It is also linked to the access to female and women issue. I am sure you might have heard about what happened, and still continues to happen, in Herat. Herat is a province that neighbours Iran, and it is one of the big hotspots where a lot of returnees come back. The discrimination against females and women in Herat—not just over health, and not just at the border, but everywhere—is really serious. When the de facto authority did not allow our female staff to work at the reception centre, the humanitarian actors came together and decided to suspend until they allow our female staff back. It was essential that we had strong support from the UK in making sure that we engaged and kept engagement with Taliban to negotiate, but we kept our principled approach, because a principled approach is the practical approach. That is the only way we can negotiate to ensure our female staff can work. That is the only way we can reach women and girls in the country. Without our female staff, we simply cannot reach females and girls. We are very thankful for the strong support. The FCDO even volunteered to make sure that they could talk to the other donors so that there is strong support for us on the ground, and that has been essential, making sure that it is not just keeping what is happening in Afghanistan as a political issue, but having a pragmatic, principled and practical approach to engagement in the country. The UK’s stand on that has been essential. We want to make sure that that is stressed to other member states, so that more countries will engage with us and engage with the DFA in such a principled but practical manner.

Very briefly, you have said that engagement is not endorsement, but perhaps you could outline any further concrete suggestions for how we might strengthen that collaboration and perhaps even influence the situation for the better.

One issue is that it is only EU and Japan and very few countries that are in the country. It makes a huge difference to have the presence in the country, having that almost daily interaction with the DFA. I cannot speak for everyone, but we would welcome having more member states present on the ground and then you will really see the benefits and effectiveness of the practical engagement they could have in the country and the change. That is the only way that we can influence what is going on in the country. While we know that we have many visits from the UK to Afghanistan, to have physical presence would be even better.

Thank you; that is an excellent note to end on. I greatly appreciate all of you highlighting the strengths that the UK is bringing to a very complex and challenging situation. I also greatly appreciate the work that you and that your teams are doing. Your principled, pragmatic and practical approach is appreciated. Thank you so much for making the time to be with us today and for what you and your teams do every single day. Thank you.